45,360 research outputs found
Detecting transit signatures of exoplanetary rings using SOAP3.0
CONTEXT. It is theoretically possible for rings to have formed around
extrasolar planets in a similar way to that in which they formed around the
giant planets in our solar system. However, no such rings have been detected to
date.
AIMS: We aim to test the possibility of detecting rings around exoplanets by
investigating the photometric and spectroscopic ring signatures in
high-precision transit signals.
METHODS: The photometric and spectroscopic transit signals of a ringed planet
is expected to show deviations from that of a spherical planet. We used these
deviations to quantify the detectability of rings. We present SOAP3.0 which is
a numerical tool to simulate ringed planet transits and measure ring
detectability based on amplitudes of the residuals between the ringed planet
signal and best fit ringless model.
RESULTS: We find that it is possible to detect the photometric and
spectroscopic signature of near edge-on rings especially around planets with
high impact parameter. Time resolution 7 mins is required for the
photometric detection, while 15 mins is sufficient for the spectroscopic
detection. We also show that future instruments like CHEOPS and ESPRESSO, with
precisions that allow ring signatures to be well above their noise-level,
present good prospects for detecting rings.Comment: 13 pages, 16 figures, 2 tables , accepted for publication in A&
WMAP Constraints on a Quintessence Model
We use the results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) for
the locations of peaks and troughs of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)
power spectrum, together with constraints from large-scale structure, to study
a quintessence model in which the pure exponential potential is modified by a
polynomial factor. Our analysis, in the cosmological
parameters space shows that this quintessence model is favoured compared to
CDM for and relatively high values of early
quintessence; for , quintessence and CDM give similar results,
except for high values of early quintessence, in which case CDM is
favoured.Comment: 3 pages. Talk presented by N. M. C. Santos at the Tenth Marcel
Grossmann Meeting on General Relativity, Rio de Janeiro, July 200
Probing the effect of gravitational microlensing on the measurements of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect
In general, in the studies of transit light-curves and the
Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM), the contribution of the planet's gravitational
microlensing is neglected. Theoretical studies, have, however shown that the
planet's microlensing can affect the transit light-curve and in some extreme
cases cause the transit depth to vanish. In this letter, we present the results
of our quantitative analysis of microlening on the RM effect. Results indicate
that for massive planets in on long period orbits, the planet's microlensing
will have considerable contribution to the star's RV measurements. We present
the details of our study, and discuss our analysis and results.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
Supernovae constraints on dark energy and modified gravity models
We use the Type Ia Supernova gold sample to constrain the parameters of dark
energy models namely the Cardassian, Dvali-Turner (DT) and generalized
Chaplygin gas (GCG) models. In our best fit analysis for these dark energy
proposals we consider flat and the non-flat priors. For all models, we find
that relaxing the flatness condition implies that data favors a positive
curvature; moreover, the GCG model is nearly flat, as required by Cosmic
Microwave Background (CMB) observations.Comment: 6 pages, Latex file + 9 eps figures + (jpconf.cls,jpconf11.clo), to
appear in the Proceedings of the Fourth Meeting on Constrained Dynamics and
Quantum Gravity (QG05), Cala Gonone (Italy) September 12-16 200
Revisiting the correlation between stellar activity and planetary surface gravity
Aims: We re-evaluate the correlation between planetary surface gravity and
stellar host activity as measured by the index log(). This
correlation, previously identified by Hartman (2010), is now analyzed in light
of an extended measurements dataset, roughly 3 times larger than the original
one.
Methods: We calculated the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient between
the two quantities and its associated p-value. The correlation coefficient was
calculated for both the full dataset and the star-planet pairs that follow the
conditions proposed by Hartman (2010). In order to do so, we considered
effective temperatures both as collected from the literature and from the
SWEET-Cat catalog, which provides a more homogeneous and accurate effective
temperature determination.
Results: The analysis delivers significant correlation coefficients, but with
a lower value than those obtained by Hartman (2010). Yet, the two datasets are
compatible, and we show that a correlation coefficient as large as previously
published can arise naturally from a small-number statistics analysis of the
current dataset. The correlation is recovered for star-planet pairs selected
using the different conditions proposed by Hartman (2010). Remarkably, the
usage of SWEET-Cat temperatures leads to larger correlation coefficient values.
We highlight and discuss the role of the correlation betwen different
parameters such as effective temperature and activity index. Several additional
effects on top of those discussed previously were considered, but none fully
explains the detected correlation. In light of the complex issue discussed
here, we encourage the different follow-up teams to publish their activity
index values in the form of log() index so that a comparison across
stars and instruments can be pursued.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in A&
SOAP-T: A tool to study the light-curve and radial velocity of a system with a transiting planet and a rotating spotted star
We present an improved version of SOAP (Boisse et al. 2012) named "SOAP-T",
which can generate the radial velocity variations and light-curves for systems
consisting of a rotating spotted star with a transiting planet. This tool can
be used to study the anomalies inside transit light-curves and the
Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, to better constrain the orbital configuration and
properties of planetary systems and active zones of their host stars. Tests of
the code are presented to illustrate its performance and to validate its
capability when compared with analytical models and real data. Finally, we
apply SOAP-T to the active star, HAT-P-11, observed by the NASA Kepler space
telescope and use this system to discuss the capability of this tool in
analyzing light-curves for the cases where the transiting planet overlaps with
the star's spots.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysic
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